Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead Review

Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In is a massive cultural phenomenon and its title has become an instant catchphrase for empowering women. The book soared to the top of bestseller lists internationally, igniting global conversations about women and ambition. Sandberg packed theatres, dominated opinion pages, appeared on every major television show and on the cover of Time magazine, and sparked ferocious debate about women and leadership.

Ask most women whether they have the right to equality at work and the answer will be a resounding yes, but ask the same women whether they'd feel confident asking for a raise, a promotion, or equal pay, and some reticence creeps in.

The statistics, although an improvement on previous decades, are certainly not in women's favour – of 197 heads of state, only twenty-two are women. Women hold just 20 percent of seats in parliaments globally, and in the world of big business, a meagre eighteen of the Fortune 500 CEOs are women.

In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg – Facebook COO and one of Fortune magazine's Most Powerful Women in Business – draws on her own experience of working in some of the world's most successful businesses and looks at what women can do to help themselves, and make the small changes in their life that can effect change on a more universal scale.

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Some Testimonial About This Book:

Hillary

I highly recommend this book. As a single mom near the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, the negative reviews would have led me to believe 'Lean In' wasn't for me and that only an elite few could re...

Erica

Read this book if you want to get inside the head of a power elite. Read this book if you want to hear about all of the things that women do wrong, to make sure you don't make the same mistakes. And t...

Ben Jaques-Leslie

Lean In... Oh Lean In... the book of the moment. There are some large complaints about this book. That it should be men who change their behavior at work. That this book undermines the need to make st...

Yukari Watanabe

I feel sad that so many people criticize Sheryl's book WITHOUT reading it. When I told my husband that I was reading "Lean In", he said, "Oh..., but people say it's for only rich elite women who can a...

Hanne

Little story: In my previous department we all got nicknames, all of them meant to be very descriptive of the person but also really positive. They were brainstormed and then voted on, which actually ...

Jasmine

This is a great start on this particular conversation, but Sandberg leaves out two large groups of women; women of color and women who are not wealthy. While many women want to sit at the table and le...

Ceilidh

2.5 stars to be more precise. Sandberg is far more likeable than I expected and I appreciated her self-deprecating sense of humour, honesty about her insecurities and enthusiasm for supporting other w...

Lena

While this book by the COO of Facebook is ostensibly about women in the workplace, it's really about subconscious cognitive biases. A majority of Americans may consider women and men to be equal on th...

LDJ

Although this book is certain to help many women, I gave it 4 stars because some of the advice has already been shared in similar books (perhaps without as much research and statistics to back things ...

Afsheen

This book is terrible on all levels. It is written at a level beneath anyone who might hope to achieve the type of success she discusses. And the message is wrong. I consider myself a woman who is suc...